Gardaí to begin occupying section of National Train Control Centre at Heuston Station

Specialist gardaí will be transferring from the force’s command centre at Harcourt Square.

Garda personnel are set to begin occupying a section of the National Train Control Centre at Heuston Station in Dublin from this Thursday, as part of the rollout of the force’s new dispatch system.

The specialist gardaí, who will be transferring from the force’s command centre at Harcourt Square, will be administering the test phase of the new CAD2 (computer aided dispatch) system.

The entire Garda command and control team is then expected to relocate fully to the NTCC in November of this year, according to  Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath, in response to a query from Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy.

The new €13.5m dispatch system, provided by the UK-based Saab Technologies, is slated to go live in full before the end of 2022, albeit only in the Dublin region at first.

Antiquated system

The next-generation system is set to replace its predecessor — first introduced in 1987 — the antiquated nature of which was highlighted during the recent 999 calls scandal, which saw thousands of emergency calls from vulnerable people ‘cancelled’ before an official Pulse record could be created.

The space at Heuston Station which the gardaí will occupy was identified as one of several ‘overspills’ for the force’s move from Harcourt Square to an €86.6m new build on State-owned land at Military Road in Kilmainham. The new property is not large enough to handle the old command centre’s full staff complement.

It is unclear what rent the National Transport Authority is charging the Office of Public Works, which is managing the Military Road project, for the use of Heuston. The OPW had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Accommodation

Previously the OPW had said the new command centre will be too small to accommodate its current roster of personnel because the expansion in the force’s numbers was not known at the time of tender.

However, the Irish Examiner subsequently reported that the OPW had known as far back as 2016 that 1,090 garda staff worked at Harcourt Square at the time, yet the Military Road site would only accommodate 850 people.

The new National Train Control Centre at Heuston, which is expected to be completed by the middle of this month, is a replacement for the existing central traffic control centre at Connolly Station in north Dublin city.

The full NTCC project involves the installation of a new rail traffic management system to “ensure the safe and efficient management” of the 600 passenger trains operating each day on the Irish Rail network, according to Anne Graham, chief executive of the NTA.

The OPW has until the end of this year to remove all gardaí from Harcourt Square or else face payment of a substantial penalty — likely amounting to tens of millions — to its landlord, the real estate investment trust Hibernia.